CHAPTER FOUR, THE COWLEY LINE
It has so far been impossible to trace the origin, place or parents of St. Ledger Cowley. However, the records in Dublin are being readied for publication and it is to be hoped that in a few years, our scant knowledge of him will be enough to locate him there.
1. ST. LEDGER1 COWLEY, was born,
it is said, in Ireland about 1735, and died in Stamford, New York in 1797.
He married in Ireland about 1763, MARY REED, who was born there about 1740.
Mary Reed was said to be a silk weaver in Dublin, the daughter of William
Reed The information about his children was found, unless otherwise noted,
in records made by Leverett Russell son of Electa
3(Jonathan2, St.Ledger1) Cowley. St.
Ledger and Mary sailed to America in 1769 with their two sons, Jonathan and
Samuel, landing in New York and staying in that region for a few years. His
third son William was born in New York City.
The first document we have on St.
Ledger is his journal, kept while he was a peddlar traveling out of New York
City up and down the Hudson River in Westchester County during 1771-72.
The journal is now in the possession of B.H. Morrison, who copied a
few pages for me and whose wife Charlotte is descended from St. Ledger
through Marshall3 (William2) St.
Ledger1. It is written in surprisingly
good
handwriting,
showing he had had some education. He sold "spectickles" and "sizzers", "fine
floward lawn andkerchiefs", thread, ribbons, calico, taffeta, silver buckles,
a "pair of buckskin britches pable next six months," and even took someone's
watch into New York for repair and delivered it on his next round.
The story goes that Mary Cowley " a strong, resolute woman from the Emerald Isle", who had been out for a while, probably hanging laundry or doing some other chore, returned to her house to find her husband and a Tory, blackfaced to look like an Indian, struggling over a pair of breeches which the thief had taken from a chest. While both of them were pulling on the pants, not so hard as to rip them, Elizabeth casually stepped up asking what was the matter, and "by a sudden movement" snatched the pants from their hands, then seized a poker which she beat about the Tory's head until he retreated. (Gould)
In October 1778, Colonel Butler set out against the Indians under Brant starting at Schorarie with 267 men. They went by wagon road up Schoharie Creek to North Blenheim, then by Indian path "over the hill" past Stamford down the west branch of the Delaware to the house of Isaac Sawyer near Hobart.. Then down the river 10 miles to Cowleys, the place where Cowley had settled. (Monroe)
St. Ledger's next recorded adventure was more serious than the breeches incident. By the spring of 1779, the family was living near Bloomfield on the Delaware River. One day St. Ledger and his son Jonathan were returning from a visit to their neighbor Sawyer, when they were captured by four Indians and escorted home where the Indians amused themseles by shooting holes in the churn and "other gleeful sports." The next day they also captured Sawyer and then with the two men and Jonathan , started off for Canada. Jonathan managed to escape by climbing a tree with large branches overhanging the river while they were gathering firewood, the men pretending he had fallen in and drowned. They were taken down river on a raft about 40 miles and then walked overland toward Fort Niagara, the Indian stronghold on Lake Ontario.. About midnight on the eleventh night while the Indians slept Cowley quietly stole an ax and Sawyer a tomahawk and killed two of their four captors, mortally wounding a third. (Sawyer had trouble when his tomahawk stuck in the Indian's head and the handle pulled out). Knowing that the escaped Indian would soon lead a pursuit after them, they did not retreat over the path they had come by, but struck out southeast through the woods, eventually making it back to civilization. Cowley went to Schoharie and then Albany for help and with a troop of forty men managed to get the women and children moved to safety at Scoharie.(Munsell and others). But there was a very sad aftermath. Looking for revenge for their slaughtered braves, a bunch of Indians came up the Delaware looking for white men. They found one family of a man, McKee,, who had gone for night to the fort for flour and news, shot his wife and baby and threw the rest into the flames of his burning house. Only one daughter, age sixteen, was left alive but taken captive, Anne McKee; she lived to return after the war was over (Monroe)..
On the 17th of July 1777, the Council of Safety ordered two companies to be formed. One of these companies was to be commanded by Col. John Harper., with Alexander Harper as first lieutenant. This may have been the nucleus of the Fifth Tryon County Regiment which appears in the Minutes of the Ccouncil of Appointments 3 March 1780, making appointments of:
John Harper Colonel of the regiment heretofore commanded by him, and, among others,
St. Leger Cowley, Adjutant..
The DAR records say that St. Ledger was appointed Adjutant in 1780 and served as barracks master in the quartermaster's department in Albany until 1783.
When the war was over, he returned to the Harpersville area, and settled on the Delaware River in the present town of Stamford, building and operating a sawmill on the east side of the river and a grist mill on the west side. By the time of his death, he had accumulated considerable property, and was quite affluent. His will, the first filed in Delaware County (Book 1, page 1) was signed 13 September 1796 and filed 7 August 1797. The executors were his "well beloved and trusty friends" John Harper and Joshua Brett and his son William; Giles Humiston was one of the witnesses. He left his wife Mary lot 217 and the plans and limber for a new house to be built for her ; his "pleasure sleigh and wood sleigh", and directions to finish the educations of Ann and St. Ledger, his youngest children. All his children were well provided for, some of the items were: to son Jonathan his olive colored velvet britches; to son Samuel his riding horse and saddle and silver watch, to son William his saw mill, to St. Ledger his silver shoe buckles, to Mary 50 acres of land in Rensselaerwyck, and to each of the other girls 100 pounds and a cow. A special bequest was 1000 feet of pine boards and ten pounds to build the Presbyterian Meeting house.
Children of St. Ledger and Mary:
i. JONATHAN2 COWLEY, b. Ireland 8 Jan. 1764; m. 1813 HULDAH HOTCHKISS; died by drowning in Lake Cayuga, new York. He married in 1813 HULDAH HOTCHKISS;. One day he was fishing with his son Leverett on the shore of Lake Cayuga near Ithaca, NY when they were attacked by a bunch of Indians. They had no weapons so were forced to flee in their canoe and stay in the middle of the lake. A storm came up, the canoe capsized, and both were drowned. Children of Jonathan and Huldah were Mary, Joseph, Samuel, Serena, Calvin, Lenas, Electa, Leverett, Ledger,and Charity. This Electa married George Nelson Russell; they were the parents of Leverett Russell who made the family record from his mother's memories.
ii. SAMUEL COWLEY, b. Ireland 1768; d. 1849; unmarried; was born both lame and deaf. He never married.
iii. WILLIAM COWLEY, born in New York City 1770; d. Stamford 8 Sept. 1850; m. ESTHER THAYER; children: William., Marshall, Asahel, Archibald, Alice, Clarissa, Laura, and Electa. He dropped dead in his store.
iv. MARY COWLEY, b. Greenbush 20 May 1773; d. 8 Jan 1857; m. JOHN WILSON ROCKWELL, an innkeeper (according to land records), children: Eliza, Caroline, George,. Frances, and Mary Ann..Before her marriage to Rockwell,, Mary had had an illegitimate child, William Cowley born about 1801. The father was Archibald Shannon, merchant, of Phillipstown (now Nassau), who in his will of 1806 left William sixty pounds and one fourth of the proceeds from the sale of his house, the rest to his wife, Siche.. This amount Mary and John Rockwell appealed to collect after the death of William, less than eight years old, about 1809.
v. MARTHA COWLEY, b. Harpersfield, 10 May 1776; d. 26 July 1860; m. ALBAN DAVIS, children: Joel, Joseph, William, Eliza, Mary and Caroline..
2 vi. ELIZABETH (BETSY) COWLEY, b Greenbush 20. Oct 1779.
vii. ANN (NANCY) COWLEY, b. Greenbush 14 Nov. 1782; d. 20 Nov. 1870; m. ELIJAH WEBSTER, children: Mary, George, Erastus, Roxy, Oscar, Anne, Jared, Beriah, Novatus.
viii. LEDGER COWLEY, b. Greenbush 27 Jan 1787; d.. 20 January 1852; m. (1) REBECCA MAYNARD, children: Samuel, Erasmus Darwin (poor fellow); b. (2) HANNAH HALL, children: Stephen, Giles Humiston, Martha, Rebecca., Mary Ann, William, Abijah, and Asenath.
2. ELIZABETH2 (St. Ledger1) COWLEY was born in Greenbush New York 20 Oct. 1779 and died in. Centerville, Pennsylvania 1848. She married, in Harpersville, New York CHARLES PECK.
My father, who in his genealogy was rarely lyrical, became so over Elizabeth Cowley.
" She was of that wonderful type of frontier woman that has done so much for our country. Though she was forced to live all her later life in conditions of great hardship and almost privation, she was able to keep alive, and transmit to her family, the highest standards of morals and culture. My Aunt Carrie, the sole survivor of my father's family, now a woman of 81, wrote my mother a few months ago regarding her grandmother. 'Charles Peck and family were lured by the false representations of the Holland Land Company. They made the best of it and Grandma Peck was a host. She was very well educated and saw that her children's minds and hearts were looked after. I know that my mother was graduated from Meadville academy, an institution that was approved by Eastern Colleges. Grandma Peck retained her love of good books to the last. She read with the books propped on the high window ledge where she could see them as she washed dishes---a history of the Revolution by an Italian and translated into English....two volumes."